


That's Great (it starts with an earthquake)

by minkhollow



Series: Friends of the Warehouse [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Warehouse 13
Genre: Artie vs. the Apocanope, Crossover, Gen, past Artie/MacPherson, should be a safe year to be in he said, there aren't many good rhymes for six Aziraphale said
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27597214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkhollow/pseuds/minkhollow
Summary: Artie's had good years in this job, but 1996 is not shaping up to be one of them.Or: Whereelsewould you store three objects that, when in the right (wrong) hands, can bring about the end of the world?
Series: Friends of the Warehouse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817719
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	That's Great (it starts with an earthquake)

**Author's Note:**

> Most of this is pre-canon for Warehouse; the last scene is 'nebulously late season 1.' As usual for this continuity, Book Omens Apocanope with TV Set Dressing (and a couple more book nods thrown in for flavor, and because I adore them).

Artie’s had good years in this job, but 1996 is not shaping up to be one of them.

If Conrad and Cooper make it through August intact, they’ll be the first new Warehouse agents to survive the job for longer than a month in three years. The pings haven’t stopped rolling in just because they’re shorthanded. Inventory’s piling up, not to mention paperwork, and sorting new things has been next to impossible without Gus. And to top it all off, James--

Well, the less said about MacPherson the better, but having the door so irrevocably closed to patching things up is still something Artie has to cope with. He’s doing a tremendously miserable job of it so far.

He’s trying to figure out where to start with the mountain of papers that’s overtaken his desk when there’s a knock at the door. Artie frowns and immediately pulls up the security camera feed for the front door; _no one_ should be knocking, but he might be able to excuse Conrad or Cooper. But it’s not either of them. It looks like a courier.

There should _definitely_ not be couriers coming to the Warehouse.

The guy doesn’t go away after no one answers the door, and even has the audacity to knock again. Artie sighs. Clearly he’s going to have to run this person off.

When he reaches the door, he barely opens it a crack, blocking off any view of the umbilicus as best he can (sure, it’s not as bad as the Warehouse proper, but there’s the bombs to consider). “What.”

“Mr.--” The courier consults his clipboard for a moment. “Funny, could’ve sworn that started with a W. Mr. Nielsen?”

Artie doesn’t confirm or deny, especially as close as the courier brushed against his birth surname. “What do you want?”

“I’m here to pick up a few packages?”

“You have the wrong place.” Artie slams the door shut, and only doesn’t stomp down the umbilicus back to the office because agitating bombs for no reason is a bad idea. He has too much to do as it is and no time for these pranks--

“Who was at the door, Arthur?”

Two decades later, Artie still has hope he won’t jump out of his skin when Mrs. Frederic shows up like this; today is not that day. “You’re literally going to give me a heart attack doing that one of these days.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“Someone must’ve pranked a courier. He said he was here to pick something up.”

Mrs. Frederic frowns, ever so slightly, and suddenly Artie’s worried. “I’m afraid we may need to allow it.”

“ _Allow_ it? We don’t - this isn’t a lending library! The whole _point_ is that people can’t just come pick up Artifacts whenever they please!”

By the time Artie’s said his piece, though, Mrs. Frederic is already halfway down the umbilicus herself. She has a brief conversation with the courier and returns with his clipboard, looking grimmer than usual.

“This once, we’re required to make an exception, Arthur.”

“If we start making exceptions now, where does it--”

Mrs. Frederic presses the clipboard into Artie’s hands. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but I received warning that this was likely. I rather doubt word about this loan will get out, one way or another.”

Artie looks at the clipboard, and wishes he hadn’t. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“But these would--”

“I know.”

“Then why--”

“It’s _out of our hands_.” Mrs. Frederic pulls a crisply folded piece of paper out of a pocket and passes it over. “This may go some way toward explaining.”

“I really doubt anything is going to justify _enabling the apocalypse_ ,” Artie mutters, but he unfolds the note anyway. It’s in a very fine hand, in very fine ink, on very fine paper.

_Irene,_

_Matters are coming to a head. We are doing all we can to prevent or mitigate the damage, but I cannot guarantee anything. I expect your organisation will play a tangential role within the decade, if we are unsuccessful._

_I pray that, if it comes to that, we will return the items to you in short order._

The note isn’t signed, as such, but there’s a sigil imprinted in the spot where a signature would go, of a pattern Artie recognises from some of his more obscure research.

“Who is this from?”

“A friend,” Mrs. Frederic says, in a tone that offers no further explanation. “Now, if you would be so good as to gather the items, we can turn our attention to what _can_ be done on our end.”

***

Artie hates every minute of it, but he grabs three boxes and some shipping material and heads into the stacks.

The sword is the easiest to find; it’s practically the only thing in Eden-40, alongside a handful of ancient-looking seeds purportedly from the Tree of Knowledge itself. (Artie had doubted that, in his early days. Then he saw what Artifacts are capable of, and it didn’t seem so implausible anymore.)

The other two tend to move around, if the old inventory records are anything to go by (ah, the days when he had time to read those for fun and James would give him hell for it--). He tracks down the scales in Belfast sector, but the silver crown has him stumped for a good fifteen minutes before he eventually finds it in Pittsburgh sector, of all places.

He feels sick, boxing everything up, but he has gloves on. It’s probably not a side effect.

Mrs. Frederic follows Artie back to the front door, like she knows he wouldn’t hand over the packages if she didn’t. Being fair, she’s completely right. The Warehouse isn’t _meant_ to loan things out, especially not Artifacts as dangerous as these three in concert.

“Sword, scales, crown,” he says, all but shoving the boxes at the courier and indicating each one in turn. “I really hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I’m just delivering packages, sir. It’s other folk what have to know what they’re doing.”

Great. Now he feels even _less_ reassured.

“Give my regards to Maud,” Mrs. Frederic says.

The courier mock-tips his cap with one of those dopey, horribly-in-love smiles that’s the absolute last thing Artie wants to see right now. “Consider it done, ma’am. Now, if one of you could sign off on this pick-up, I’ll be on my way.”

Artie refuses to handle that clipboard again, so Mrs. Frederic signs it, and then the courier gets into his truck and drives off.

“Who’s Maud?”

Mrs. Frederic doesn’t answer, which Artie was half expecting.

“What do we do now?” he says instead. Maybe she’ll have more to say about that.

“We watch for oddities, and act to mitigate the ones we can. One never knows what pieces of the puzzle may prove crucial.”

“How long do we _have_?”

“With the Artifacts out for delivery…” Mrs. Frederic purses her lips. “Perhaps a week. Perhaps less. Having reached this point, matters will escalate quickly.”

“A _week_?! What are we supposed to get done in a week? Couldn’t you have mentioned this--”

But she’s gone when Artie turns back around from his rant, because of course she is. He sighs, retreats to his desk, and barely restrains the urge to beat his head against it repeatedly.

Of all the times to have a desperate need to talk to a dead man.

***

That was Monday. By Friday, Artie’s sending Conrad and Cooper to the UK to investigate a nuclear reactor that seems to have misplaced its reaction agent. That would set off alarm bells at the best of times; it’s the fact that a _lemon drop_ is apparently keeping the thing operating at normal capacity that puts a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Less than a week, then. Great. Fantastic. Just when this _fucking_ year hadn’t looked like it could get any worse.

Even by ‘the Warehouse is woefully understaffed’ standards, the pings come in too fast to keep up with, let alone try to counter, from there. He could field one of these things at a time, or maybe two if they were in close enough proximity.

But it’s the power plant _and_ Atlantis suddenly popping out of the mid-Atlantic Ocean _and_ the Amazon rainforest abruptly regrowing itself _and_ various Tibetan residents possessed of an urge to dig tunnels _and_ a sea monster terrorising anything trying to cross the Pacific _and_ tornado conditions in the English countryside _and_ God knows what else. God probably does know what else, considering, but doesn’t seem inclined to share.

James would have come up with something by now. He was always better at the quick-thinking stuff--

No. MacPherson chose his side, and wouldn’t be available to consult about all this even if he weren’t dead.

Saturday morning finds Artie, not having slept since Thursday, scouring the stacks with increasing desperation for something, anything, that can cut off whatever’s rerouting power in the Minot missile silo and trying to launch its payload. He’s uncomfortably certain that shutting off one silo won’t be enough, won’t be anything close to enough, but if that’s all he can do before the world ends he is damned well going to do it.

He’s just closed in on a possibility that he can activate without leaving the Warehouse - sure, Franklin’s key will cause a blackout in the entire northern Great Plains, but it will definitely cut power to the Minot silo - when the Regent on the other end of the Farnsworth call looks confused, then utterly relieved. “It’s stopped? ...Good. It’s stopped. Thank you for the assistance, though we didn’t end up needing it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Artie says, and hangs up, barely not collapsing where he stands. He probably shouldn’t hang up on one of his bosses, but he’s sure they’ll understand, under the circumstances. They probably wouldn’t have called in the first place, if not for the Warehouse being so short on regular agents and _the fucking apocalypse_.

Besides, he can’t catch up on sleep just yet, not until he knows the problem is actually over. That means he has to trudge back up to the office, and sitting down at the computer is nearly enough to put him to sleep - but the reports trickling in do point toward everything resolving, somehow.

Good. Maybe whoever arranged for this farce has learned something from it.

***

Artie wakes up Sunday afternoon to a world that seems to be more or less back to normal… and a world in which he’s down two Warehouse agents. Again. As far as he can piece together, Cooper couldn’t resist investigating Atlantis and ended up in the middle of the ocean when it disappeared again, and Conrad was stuck in traffic trying to get into London when the M25 - the reports aren’t clear, especially with half the news media trying to write it all off as mass hallucinations, but apparently it spontaneously combusted or something.

At least the video footage of a televangelist completely losing the plot and debunking the Rapture is pretty amusing, but he’s glad he missed it yesterday. He really wouldn’t have been in the mood.

Mrs. Frederic has the grim task of whatever next-of-kin notifications are necessary; all Cooper and Conrad’s families are likely to know is that they died in the line of duty, but that’ll be good enough. Artie’s job begins and ends with putting their rooms into storage. It’s one more piece of busy work on top of all the other busy work he doesn’t have time for, but it’s not going to be recurring, unlike inventory and pings.

It helps, ever so slightly, that Mrs. Frederic mentions a lead on someone who can handle sorting new Artifacts when she pops in after doing the next-of-kin stuff. Even if whoever that is isn’t suited for field work, it’ll be one less thing Artie has to try to figure out himself (and he freely admits he’s nothing _like_ emotionally balanced to do the job properly, especially right now).

On Monday, the courier comes back. Artie still doesn’t like that he’s here at all, but all things considered, he can be a little less sour about it.

“Just returning your items,” the courier says, when Artie opens the front door.

“ _Good_. They shouldn’t have been taken out in the first place.”

“Not my place to say, sir. Just need you to sign for the packages.”

Artie’s a _lot_ more comfortable signing for the Artifacts’ return than he was for sending them out - just as well, since if Mrs. Frederic is here today she hasn’t made her presence known.

“If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, this has been a _hell_ of a weekend and no mistake,” the courier says, apparently under the impression Artie’s interested in small talk. Artie just hums in dismissive agreement - not like the guy’s wrong - and then remembers he does have one unanswered question.

“Who’s Maud?”

The courier breaks out in another of those dopey grins. “The missus. Your boss is part of her family somehow, not sure I ever caught the relation but close enough that she popped by our wedding.”

“Ah.” He’s really not sure what he expected. In any case, he passes the clipboard back, and the courier touches his cap again and heads off.

Everything else can wait - first things first, he’s dunking all three of these things in the deep-clean neutralizer tanks, just to make sure they’re not carrying any more apocalyptic energy. Then he’s putting them back where they belong - well, where he found them, in the case of the scales and crown - and hopefully never thinking about this God-awful week ever again.

***

Claudia’s 99 percent sure that ‘go sort through the unresolved ping files’ is code for ‘get the hell out of my face for a while’ - Artie’s not terribly subtle at the best of times - but it’s equal parts interesting and alarming, so she’s not really complaining. It’d just be interesting if not for what it _means_ that all this stuff went unchecked.

“Why are there so _many_ of these?”

Pete shrugs. “When we first got here, it sounded like it’d basically just been Artie for years - well, and Leena, but she doesn’t do much field stuff. They might’ve just not had the numbers.”

“I guess, but this is a-- whoa.” The next folder Claudia picks up is red, and very thick, and labeled **August 18-25, 1996**. “Holy Pingpocalypse, Batman. This was all one _week_?”

It only gets weirder when she flips through the bulging file folder. Sure, Joshua was in the depths of his dissertation at the time and she was nine, and they didn’t watch the news a whole lot anyway, but still. She doesn’t remember hearing about any of this at the time, and all of it seems like the kind of thing that would stick in the mind.

When Pete finally looks over, he lets out a low whistle. “Damn. What even happened?”

“All the things, apparently. Spontaneously combusting highway, rapid rainforest regrowth, frakking _Atlantis_ \--”

“Wait, what? Let me see that.”

Claudia passes over the folder. Pete frowns when he sees the date on the outside, and frowns more as he reads the files.

“Holy shit,” he finally says. “That explains a lot.”

“That makes one of us. I was nine, Joshua was hip-deep in teleportation theory. What the hap was fuckening?”

“Don’t really know the details myself, only that I spent that weekend drinking myself sick trying to ignore the worst vibe I’d had since Dad died. And at that point? Drinking myself sick was an achievement. Once the hangover cleared, all I really got out of anyone else was mass hallucinations of some kind, but if there’s info on it here…”

“Then not so much with the hallucinating,” Claudia finishes. “Do you think we should add this to the pile of stuff Artie wants to reopen, or not?”

“...No, I don’t think so. Even though it’s in the unresolved pile, I bet he’d rather consider it closed.”

Claudia’s not sure if that’s vibe territory or not, but they’ve all learned pretty quickly not to argue with Pete’s gut instincts. “Legit. That much at once, and from the looks of it he lost two people to it… I wouldn’t wanna revisit it either.”

“Pretty much.” Pete sighs. “You know, in hindsight, the mess I made of myself that weekend was probably a big factor in Amanda asking for a divorce.”

“Hold the phone, you were _married_? Why didn’t you ever say?”

“Would you have told any of us about your time in the psych ward if we hadn’t found out about it when we were looking for you?”

Claudia has to concede the point. “Fair enough. Never mentioning it again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Doc title: 'Artie's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Summer.'


End file.
